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Van Johnson has died..
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Actor Van Johnson Dies at 92
Hollywood Star Rode Boyish Good Looks
to Enormous Popularity in the 1940s
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; 3:26 PM
Van Johnson, 92, a disarming and popular Hollywood star of 1940s musicals and comedies who later proved effective as a G.I. grunt in Battleground and a conflicted Naval officer in The Caine Mutiny, has died.
Mr. Johnson died Dec. 12 at Tappan Zee Manor, a senior citizens home in Nyack, N.Y. No cause of death was immediately reported. Starting in the late 1940s, Mr. Johnson took many viewers and reviewers by surprise for his dramatic performances.
He was especially good as a presidential candidate's wily campaign manager in Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948) with Spencer Tracy as his client. Mr. Johnson also portrayed a sneaky aide to a general in Command Decision (1948); and a cynical rifleman in William Wellman's Battleground (1949), a film praised for its harrowing depiction of combat during the Battle of the Bulge.
Mr. Johnson was singled out by critics as the executive officer who sells out the paranoid Capt. Queeg (played by Humphrey Bogart) in The Caine Mutiny (1954), based on a best-selling novel by Herman Wouk. New York Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther praised Mr. Johnson for conveying the "distress and resolution" required of the part.
All of those films almost totally reversed the screen persona Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio chief Louis B. Mayer first established for Mr. Johnson, a onetime Broadway chorus boy elevated to immediate stardom during World War II.
Injures from a car crash prevented Mr. Johnson from being drafted during the war. In the absence of many male rivals, he was heavily promoted and became extremely popular. Tall and freckled, with strawberry-blond hair, he was dubbed "The Voiceless Sinatra" because of his appeal among bobbysoxers.
He was an easygoing fit for musicals with Judy Garland (In the Good Old Summertime), Esther Williams (Easy to Wed, Thrill of a Romance and Duchess of Idaho) and June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven (Two Girls and a Sailor), in which they were the girls and he the sailor. He also played romantically inclined wartime pilots in A Guy Named Joe and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, both dramas in which he showed he could hold his own against co-star Spencer Tracy.
In the second -- in which Mr. Johnson played a pilot in the Doolittle raid over Japan -- movie reviewer Crowther wrote that Mr. Johnson gave "a warm and brave performance and managed quite well to achieve a moving tenderness in love scenes and rigid strength in the action field."
For the rest of his heyday, Mr. Johnson alternated between lighter pictures (Brigadoon with Gene Kelly, The Bride Goes Wild with Allyson) and efforts to expand his repertoire. He was a homicide detective in the low-budget noir Scene of the Crime (1949), an alcoholic in The Big Hangover (1950) and a blind detective in 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). He said he saddled up for the middling Western Siege at Red River (1954) for one reason: "For 12 years, I begged Metro to put me on a horse -- just once. No dice."
Charles Van Johnson, whose father was a plumbing contractor, was born Aug. 25, 1916, in Newport, R.I.
His parents divorced, and he was raised by a strict father who discouraged his early interest in acting. His mother, an alcoholic, disappeared from his life until 1946, when he got her a studio job. She later sued him to increase her financial support, and they settled out of court. After high school graduation, Mr. Johnson headed to New York with $10 to find work as an actor.
Within a few months, he won a part in the Broadway revue "New Faces of 1936," which also featured comedian Imogene Coca. He later said he got the part by mistake, when a director mistakenly ordered him to get onstage for a scene. He said he had only been in the theater to attend rehearsal with a friend in the show.
Afterward, he appeared in a series of stage and nightclub acts. Producer George Abbott cast him as a student in the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical "Too Many Girls" (1939) and also made him the understudy to the three male leads, Desi Arnaz, Eddie Bracken and Richard Kollmar. The next year, Abbott rewarded Mr. Johnson with the part of Gene Kelly's understudy in the Broadway production of "Pal Joey," also a Rodgers and Hart musical.
A Hollywood screen test led to his leading role in the Warner Brothers cheapie Murder in the Big House (1942) with Faye Emerson, but the studio was unimpressed (so were ticketbuyers) and let his brief contract expire. He had better luck at MGM, largely through the support of actress Lucille Ball, whom he had befriended.
At MGM, Mr. Johnson underwent an apprenticeship as the second lead in a handful of pictures, including Somewhere I'll Find You with Clark Gable and Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant with Lionel Barrymore. He was also Mickey Rooney's older brother in the wartime tearjerker set on the homefront, The Human Comedy (1943).
While starring with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne in A Guy Named Joe (1943), he was in a car accident that resulted in a metal plate being inserted into his head. He was left with a scar that was often covered up, but which he let show in some of his grittier films.
He later spoke with appreciation of Tracy and Dunne for using their clout to halt filming during Mr. Johnson's three-month medical recovery. He won positive reviews in the movie, which led to frequent work during the next several years. By 1945, only Bing Crosby was a bigger box office star.
Mr. Johnson reportedly turned down the role of Elliott Ness in the television crime series "The Untouchables" in 1959. His film work soon dwindled, but he returned for a small role in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) as a patrician 1930s film character who has trouble improvising when one of the cast members (Jeff Daniels) jumps offscreen into reality.
Mr. Johnson began to call himself the King of Dinner Theater, as he spent decades as a fixture on the regional stage. He also became a mainstay of guest spots on television dramas, notably on "Murder, She Wrote", which starred his old MGM colleague Angela Lansbury.
A painter since his MGM days, Mr. Johnson had several one-man shows. He told People magazine he developed a devil-may-care style he dubbed "Van Go": "I like to paint in one swell foop." Mr. Johnson had a famously difficult private life. He married Evie Abbott Wynn in Juarez in 1947 on the day her divorce became final from actor Keenan Wynn, who had been Mr. Johnson's best friend.
Studio chief Mayer encouraged the union to quell rumors about Mr. Johnson's alleged homosexuality, according to Mayer scholar Scott Eyman. Mayer also gave Keenan Wynn a better movie contract so he would not complain.
The Johnsons, who became known for hosting sumptuous Hollywood parties, were divorced in 1962 in a bitter proceeding. Their daughter, Schuyler, became estranged from her father and wrote a scathing first-person account of him in 2005 that appeared in the Mail on Sunday, a London newspaper.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121202597.html
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----------------------------------
Actor Van Johnson Dies at 92
Hollywood Star Rode Boyish Good Looks
to Enormous Popularity in the 1940s
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; 3:26 PM
Van Johnson, 92, a disarming and popular Hollywood star of 1940s musicals and comedies who later proved effective as a G.I. grunt in Battleground and a conflicted Naval officer in The Caine Mutiny, has died.
Mr. Johnson died Dec. 12 at Tappan Zee Manor, a senior citizens home in Nyack, N.Y. No cause of death was immediately reported. Starting in the late 1940s, Mr. Johnson took many viewers and reviewers by surprise for his dramatic performances.
He was especially good as a presidential candidate's wily campaign manager in Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948) with Spencer Tracy as his client. Mr. Johnson also portrayed a sneaky aide to a general in Command Decision (1948); and a cynical rifleman in William Wellman's Battleground (1949), a film praised for its harrowing depiction of combat during the Battle of the Bulge.
Mr. Johnson was singled out by critics as the executive officer who sells out the paranoid Capt. Queeg (played by Humphrey Bogart) in The Caine Mutiny (1954), based on a best-selling novel by Herman Wouk. New York Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther praised Mr. Johnson for conveying the "distress and resolution" required of the part.
All of those films almost totally reversed the screen persona Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio chief Louis B. Mayer first established for Mr. Johnson, a onetime Broadway chorus boy elevated to immediate stardom during World War II.
Injures from a car crash prevented Mr. Johnson from being drafted during the war. In the absence of many male rivals, he was heavily promoted and became extremely popular. Tall and freckled, with strawberry-blond hair, he was dubbed "The Voiceless Sinatra" because of his appeal among bobbysoxers.
He was an easygoing fit for musicals with Judy Garland (In the Good Old Summertime), Esther Williams (Easy to Wed, Thrill of a Romance and Duchess of Idaho) and June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven (Two Girls and a Sailor), in which they were the girls and he the sailor. He also played romantically inclined wartime pilots in A Guy Named Joe and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, both dramas in which he showed he could hold his own against co-star Spencer Tracy.
In the second -- in which Mr. Johnson played a pilot in the Doolittle raid over Japan -- movie reviewer Crowther wrote that Mr. Johnson gave "a warm and brave performance and managed quite well to achieve a moving tenderness in love scenes and rigid strength in the action field."
For the rest of his heyday, Mr. Johnson alternated between lighter pictures (Brigadoon with Gene Kelly, The Bride Goes Wild with Allyson) and efforts to expand his repertoire. He was a homicide detective in the low-budget noir Scene of the Crime (1949), an alcoholic in The Big Hangover (1950) and a blind detective in 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). He said he saddled up for the middling Western Siege at Red River (1954) for one reason: "For 12 years, I begged Metro to put me on a horse -- just once. No dice."
Charles Van Johnson, whose father was a plumbing contractor, was born Aug. 25, 1916, in Newport, R.I.
His parents divorced, and he was raised by a strict father who discouraged his early interest in acting. His mother, an alcoholic, disappeared from his life until 1946, when he got her a studio job. She later sued him to increase her financial support, and they settled out of court. After high school graduation, Mr. Johnson headed to New York with $10 to find work as an actor.
Within a few months, he won a part in the Broadway revue "New Faces of 1936," which also featured comedian Imogene Coca. He later said he got the part by mistake, when a director mistakenly ordered him to get onstage for a scene. He said he had only been in the theater to attend rehearsal with a friend in the show.
Afterward, he appeared in a series of stage and nightclub acts. Producer George Abbott cast him as a student in the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical "Too Many Girls" (1939) and also made him the understudy to the three male leads, Desi Arnaz, Eddie Bracken and Richard Kollmar. The next year, Abbott rewarded Mr. Johnson with the part of Gene Kelly's understudy in the Broadway production of "Pal Joey," also a Rodgers and Hart musical.
A Hollywood screen test led to his leading role in the Warner Brothers cheapie Murder in the Big House (1942) with Faye Emerson, but the studio was unimpressed (so were ticketbuyers) and let his brief contract expire. He had better luck at MGM, largely through the support of actress Lucille Ball, whom he had befriended.
At MGM, Mr. Johnson underwent an apprenticeship as the second lead in a handful of pictures, including Somewhere I'll Find You with Clark Gable and Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant with Lionel Barrymore. He was also Mickey Rooney's older brother in the wartime tearjerker set on the homefront, The Human Comedy (1943).
While starring with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne in A Guy Named Joe (1943), he was in a car accident that resulted in a metal plate being inserted into his head. He was left with a scar that was often covered up, but which he let show in some of his grittier films.
He later spoke with appreciation of Tracy and Dunne for using their clout to halt filming during Mr. Johnson's three-month medical recovery. He won positive reviews in the movie, which led to frequent work during the next several years. By 1945, only Bing Crosby was a bigger box office star.
Mr. Johnson reportedly turned down the role of Elliott Ness in the television crime series "The Untouchables" in 1959. His film work soon dwindled, but he returned for a small role in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) as a patrician 1930s film character who has trouble improvising when one of the cast members (Jeff Daniels) jumps offscreen into reality.
Mr. Johnson began to call himself the King of Dinner Theater, as he spent decades as a fixture on the regional stage. He also became a mainstay of guest spots on television dramas, notably on "Murder, She Wrote", which starred his old MGM colleague Angela Lansbury.
A painter since his MGM days, Mr. Johnson had several one-man shows. He told People magazine he developed a devil-may-care style he dubbed "Van Go": "I like to paint in one swell foop." Mr. Johnson had a famously difficult private life. He married Evie Abbott Wynn in Juarez in 1947 on the day her divorce became final from actor Keenan Wynn, who had been Mr. Johnson's best friend.
Studio chief Mayer encouraged the union to quell rumors about Mr. Johnson's alleged homosexuality, according to Mayer scholar Scott Eyman. Mayer also gave Keenan Wynn a better movie contract so he would not complain.
The Johnsons, who became known for hosting sumptuous Hollywood parties, were divorced in 1962 in a bitter proceeding. Their daughter, Schuyler, became estranged from her father and wrote a scathing first-person account of him in 2005 that appeared in the Mail on Sunday, a London newspaper.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121202597.html
--------------------------------------------
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
... RIP
